“Helen Furr had quite a pleasant home. Mrs. Furr was quite a pleasant woman. Mr. Furr was quite a pleasant man. Helen Furr had quite a pleasant voice a voice quite worth cultivating. She did not mind working. She worked to cultivate her voice. She did not find it gay living in the same place where she had always been living. She went to a place where some were cultivating something, voices and other things needing cultivating. She met Georgine Skeene there who was cultivating her voice which some thought was quite a pleasant one. Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene lived together then.” (Miss Furr and Miss Skeene, first paragraph)

In this text, the overuse of the word gay is done purposely and repeatedly. In this simple paragraph, i can understand that Mrs. Furr was married to Mr. Furr, but decided to instead “cultivate” her voice and live with Georgine Skeene instead. This shows that she decided that although her husband was a pleasant man, she instead wanted to find herself more and be with this woman instead. The poem goes on to use the word gay very many times, and i feel like is this done so the message of the poem is blatant: they were gay and they were happy together, together both women were able to find their voices more and be happy together. However in the end, they did not end up together. I believe Steins’ point here was to show that the whole experience of them finding each other and finding their voice and living together shows that it changed them as people and made them better and braver, as after Helen Furr was able to tell people about being gay. The meaning of the word gay seems to change in the text. In the beginning, gay seemed to be used for “happy” but later on in the story, it is clear that gay now means the relationship between two of the same gender. Stein uses simple language with a much deeper rooted meaning in order to convey the story of Miss Furr and Miss Skeene.

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